


Nan Sgiathan Oir

by queenklu



Category: The Eagle | The Eagle of the Ninth (2011)
Genre: M/M, Magic Realism, Wingfic, Wings, still set in canon time, well a little bit like jupiter ascending, yup just like jupiter ascending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-15
Updated: 2015-12-15
Packaged: 2018-05-06 23:03:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5434136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queenklu/pseuds/queenklu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The eagle is not a lump of metal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nan Sgiathan Oir

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired in large part by this [ GORGEOUS GIF](http://queenklu.tumblr.com/post/128924430516/aliensamba-the-eagle-is-not-a-piece-of-metal) by aliensamba.
> 
> Title from Uiseag bheag dhearg or The Little Red Lark. _'Little red lark with the golden wings...where did you sleep last night?'_ Feel free to imagine Esca singing this song to Marcus, as I definitely, DEFINITELY will. 
> 
> [This is Seamus McGuire & friends](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UhrKpGullU) playing the tune, and [here are the lyrics!](http://www.mamalisa.com/?t=es&p=1209)

Esca's mind blurred at the edges, even from the few gulps of ceremonial mead he hadn't been able to decline under the watchful eyes of the Seal People. The moonless night seemed on fire with torches thrust to the sky, shadow and light distorting the ground beneath Esca's feet as they marched to the sea. He tripped once, and was steadied by a hand which in that moment felt familiar—Esca opened his mouth to thank Marcus, and closed it when one of Liathan's brothers grinned at him with teeth sharpened into points.

Marcus.

Esca hoped the slaves were kept well away from this sacred rite, that Marcus had fallen into slumber with a belly full of good scraps from the feasting table and slept soundly until morning with the rest of the slaves. This night was not for Roman eyes.

How long ago since his own initiation ceremony? Rome had attacked before the next year; he'd never seen the ritual from the eyes of the initiated. It felt a lifetime ago, the last time their gods walked among them, touched them, whispered in their ears. And then left them to be slaughtered and enslaved.

The chanting and drumming built on the rolling ocean waves and Esca's memories, beat a rhythm in his chest like a throbbing wound. A bonfire was lit, the men throwing themselves to the ground and leaping back up in a spray of sand, writhing bodies tumbling over each other in play, in fighting, in swimming motions that made Esca's vision blur. The boys, blindfolded and enraptured, felt salty whiskers and sea-spray on their faces—but they were seal pelts, long ago skinned, almost crumbling; it was ocean water held in the mouth and then blown through a kelp stem. All tricks. Not the seal gods they believed in.

Esca felt lost, tumbling, falling from a horse and standing only to find the world still tilting beneath his feet. Their words twisted in his ears, close enough to his own peoples' that he could speak with them, and jarringly different all the same. This was wrong. This was all wrong.

The branches he'd felt on his face, the horsehair—was it only his uncles holding twigs and swishing clippings from grooming the ponies? Could their magic have been real when this tribe needed to resort to tricks? Esca watched the Seal People dance and struggled not to feel carved out.

It didn't matter now. His people were dead. If they'd had magic, it hadn't done them any good.

A bellow drew all eyes to the water where the chieftain seemed to be striding from the sea. A great feathered cloak lay heavy upon his shoulders, a bone-white mask set with antlers reared up from his head. Esca blinked, slow, and felt his tongue thick inside his mouth. Despite everything the hair at his nape stood on end. Maybe it wasn't the chieftain at all, maybe it wasn't a mask.

“ _I am come,_ ” the creature roared, “ _Behold!_ ”

The robe shifted—and in a moment that set every muscle in Esca's body screaming—split, into two massive wings.

The Seal People fell to the ground with wailing warcries, thrashing upon the surf. Esca's knees trembled violently but he did not move, did not dare. The wings fanned out, flickering gold in the firelight, huge and vibrant and  _real._

A sharp motion cut through the corner of his eye. Esca felt his ribs clench even before he turned and saw for sure: Marcus running through the gathering, running with no sight to him but the wings upon the creature—the  _chieftain's—_ back. For in the moment before one of the warriors struck Marcus down Esca felt the fog of the night stripped from him, saw the ropes which bound the wings to the chieftain's shoulders, the thin wooden rods he used to make the wings look like they were alive.

And Esca knew in his heart that the eagle Marcus sought was not a lump of metal after all.

~*~

Esca slipped from the festivities which no more rattled for Marcus's appearance than they would for a fly landing on their back. He found an alcove near the rocky bank and kept himself there, one hand on the weapons he'd stolen from a warrior already collapsed on the sand, asleep. He watched over Marcus as he had always watched: intensely, and with great frustration.

Blood glittered on Marcus's face—was he even alive? What if the blow had struck him dead? But Esca could not think of that,  _would_ not. They could not come so far only to fail now.

So the stories had been more true than even Esca had been willing to believe. The Roman troops invaded with a winged god on their side, a man who flew above and signaled to the soldiers below in such a way that they were difficult to defeat—for an army that had eyes in the sky could foresee attacks before they happened, could send relief before the wounded even hit the ground.

The united clans fought hard the first day, and smart the second.

They drove the soldiers into the deepest glen, where the trees were thick and the ground was wet with fog. The Roman eagle god could fly as high as he liked and not see their painted warriors through the branches as they picked off soldiers one by one. When at last the full attack came the Romans fell like dogs, their winged god crying out in pain for them but no longer able to lend aid.

The stories all said the eagle god fell when he turned to flee back to Rome. That an archer from the Epidii brought him crashing to the earth, punishment for his cowardice.

_Oh Marcus_ , Esca heard his mind whisper, before he made his thoughts turn smooth as stone. Marcus would not like to learn that part of the story at all.

Esca's limbs were cramped with cold by the time the last of the Seal People curled into the sand to sleep. He'd watched where the chieftain walked when he left, marked in his memory the path out into the sea to the small island where he must keep the wings. The chieftain had returned without them on his back, drank and danced around the fire, but in Esca's preoccupation he hadn't noted where the chieftain laid his head to rest.

It didn't matter now, with the banking fire to provide them with what little light it could—a wrong step onto any sleeping body would signal their death.

Esca crept to Marcus's side and did not let himself look for signs of life. Marcus  _was_ alive, Esca knew it in his bones, and if his heart leapt to feel Marcus shift instantly under his hand it was only because the night was so still.

“We don't have much time,” Esca whispered, and pressed a sword to Marcus's chest.

Marcus stirred, curling in around the sword and away from Esca, and for a moment Esca thought on the last words they'd spoken, curiously silent in his memory until then: Marcus's promise to kill him when next he had the chance.

Instead Marcus looked at him, then shut his eyes, as if the sight of Esca pained him. “I thought I lost you,” he whispered.

Esca could have shaken him. “Come,” he said instead, and pulled Marcus to his feet.

They spoke not at all as they made their way to a small island, helped by the receding tide revealing the path the chieftain had walked upon. Even though it burned in Esca's throat to ask about the wings, he did not let himself think on anything but making sure Marcus did not fall with a mighty splash into the surf.

The passage into the rock was dark and wet, the floor painful to walk on even in their leather shoes and the walls so narrow they brushed their shoulders against the channel with every step. Feathers littered the ground, and Marcus stared at them until Esca whispered that they were not all eagle feathers, that most looked like the wild birds the Seal People hunted for food. The cavern when it opened up seemed like the belly of a great beast, lit with several torches from within. And there in the center, drooping to the floor, were the giant eagle wings.

Marcus stumbled toward them only a little less blindly than he had barreled through the camp, his sword shoved into the belt he wore so he might have both hands free to touch. At the first brush of his fingertips across feathers he let out a soft cry, as if he had been wounded.

Esca was at his side in an instant, trying to think on how they might carry the wings between them without being discovered, on how he must keep Marcus from sinking to his knees when there was so great a chance of discovery at any moment. “Marcus,” he murmured, put his hand on his shoulder; Marcus dropped his head in an instant, as if Esca had clipped his very spine. “ _Marcus._ ”

Esca fought the alarm from his voice and tried again. “We have to go. We have to go  _now._ ”

“Yes,” Marcus said, and then, “Help me,” and began to strip off his tunic, perhaps to use the cloth to bind the wings into something more manageable to carry. Esca braced his shoulder under the bend of one wing, thinking they would lift it together—the feathers were so soft, like rabbit fur, and the feel of them distracted Esca just enough that when Marcus ducked down Esca couldn't see to stop him.

Marcus stood, and when he stood the wings went with him.

Esca's jaw went slack.

There were no ropes to hold the wings in place, no rods to make them stretch out to their furthest span and ruffle as if they felt the chill. They flexed and bent independently of each other, and when Esca peered closely he could see nothing of how they merged with Marcus's bare back, only that it seemed seamless and natural. He wondered at what Marcus's face must look like. Esca could not speak at all.

“ _Traitor_.”

Esca spun, and in a sweep of air behind him felt Marcus do the same.

The chieftain still wore his mask, strode toward Marcus as if he could not see anything else for his desire of the wings. Two other warriors ran at Esca without hesitation, and he barely readied his sword in time. Killing them took every bit of focus he had—when he turned back Marcus had the chieftain thrown against the wall, his lip curled in a snarl, his wings outstretched and bristling.

He looked nothing like a creature of Rome. He barely looked like a creature of this world at all.

Marcus ripped the mask from the chieftain's head and seemed startled to find a human face beneath it. Perhaps he had not seen the ropes holding the wings in place. Perhaps he sought another face entirely.

“ _Your father died a coward, screaming as he fell from the sky,_ ” the chieftain hissed through his grin. Marcus slew him through the belly, cut his neck before his knees gave out.

For a moment Esca was sure Marcus had understood the words. Was this a gift brought by his wings?

“What did he say?” Marcus asked, breathing hard. One wing curled around him, feathers brushing the bare skin of his belly—the other wing was outstretched, still, not hiding him from Esca's sight.

Esca shook himself as hard as he dared, and made himself grip Marcus's forearm, pull him away. He half expected his...his companion to feel different, but it was just skin under his hand, and Marcus let himself be lead.

“There is no time now. We need—” Esca stopped, in words and action. “Marcus, will you be able to fit?”

Marcus's mouth thinned into a grim line. “Yes,” he said, and left the words _I have to_ hanging in the air between them.

“Let me go first,” Esca ordered, and released Marcus's arm as he turned.

Leaving was tortuously slow, Marcus scraping his chest raw against the rock as he moved sideways to give his wings more room. Esca didn't dare help at all, always keeping his eyes toward the entrance, where any further attack could come from, but he could hear Marcus's pained breathing, and twice Marcus panted out, “Stop, stop a moment,” and Esca had to stare into the dark while Marcus worked himself free. Only once did the feathers of Marcus's wing brush against him, and Marcus hissed and withdrew.

“When we get outside,” Esca whispered, not allowing himself to think on it, “will you be able to fly over the encampment? I can sneak through them alone and meet you by the horses.”

Marcus was silent a moment, only the drag of his clothes against the rock-face. Then, “I will try.”

Esca grit his teeth. “If you've never flown before, then—”

“Hush,” Marcus said, so much like a command that Esca stiffened. “We're too close to the water, our voices will carry. It is as good a plan as any.”

_Damn Roman!_ Had he never flown when he was a boy, before his father took the wings to war? Then it was a foolish plan, and they needed one better that wasn't dragging a pair of huge unwieldy wings over the bodies of sleeping warriors.

Esca had taken barely five steps along the ocean path—slowly, so slowly, not making a sound—when a great scream and the crash of running feet in water shattered the silence. The Seal warriors were eerie gray in the dark, like the Slaugh his mother used to whisper about, the unforgiven dead who roamed the highlands. A chill raced up Esca's back as he raised his sword.

Marcus yanked Esca toward him, spinning him around, and for a moment Esca thought he meant to—but he wrapped his arms around Esca and gripped him too tight, said something that sounded like, "Hold onto me."

Esca opened his mouth to snap, _There isn't time!_ and all at once the air rushed from his lungs, as swift as the ground tore away beneath his feet. His sword fell from his hand without a thought as Marcus's wings cut the air in huge, heavy sweeps—Esca felt fingers grasp at his ankle, and then nothing.

Nothing below his feet to stand upon. Nothing to break his fall.

Esca clutched at Marcus's shoulders until he feared he would leave claw marks upon his skin. Prying his hands away to wrap his arms around Marcus's neck was by far the most terrifying thing Esca had ever done in his life. Without his permission his legs had fixed themselves around Marcus's waist like a lover, or a frightened child clinging to a tree. He didn't dare look down, squeezed his eyes shut against the stinging wind and focused on the sound of Marcus panting in his ear, the sound of Marcus's wings beating at the air. He didn't want to know how far above the ground they flew, only—and he knew this in the one sickening glance he stole before fear sealed his eyelids shut—that they were well above arm's reach, well above—

Terror welled in his throat, choking him as he cried out, " _Marcus—_ "

The twang of a loosened arrow sounded from below mere moments before Marcus cried out in pain. "Marcus?" Esca shouted when his wingbeats faltered. "Marcus, where are you hit?"

His hands once so tightly affixed to Marcus's clothing now wanted more than anything to search out the wound and mend it, but he didn't dare—not if it meant overbalancing them both. _Think calmly_ , he snarled at himself. _He cannot have been hit where your own body covers his._

"My leg," Marcus gasped and swore.

"Listen to me," Esca said as loud as he dared. One of his hands curled up through Marcus's hair, protective at the back of his neck. "You _must_ fly higher—or as fast as you can, Marcus, take us from this place." He pressed his cheek to Marcus's, the wind stealing tears from his eyes. "Set aside your pain, you don't need your legs to fly."

Esca felt Marcus clench his jaw, that same proud stubbornness that had once seemed so Roman and now seemed so singularly Marcus. "Please, my Marcus,” Esca whispered, sure he would not be heard above the wind.

Marcus roared, his wings beating ferociously about their heads, and in a moment Esca heard the calls of the Seal People fading, and in another moment there was nothing at all to hear, save Marcus's thrumming heartbeat, and the sound of his beautiful wings.

~*~

"Esca," Marcus said some time later through gritted teeth, "I fear when I land I will only add to my injury.”

Esca nodded; he feared this also. "Slow," he said, "as slow as you can. Try to search out somewhere soft to land, we'll think of shelter once we're on the ground.”

Marcus nodded tightly against him, and Esca stroked his head the way he used to sooth the horses when they were overtired. He felt a soft pang of loss for them _,_ left among the Seal People. At least they would be well taken care of.

"There," Marcus said presently; Esca trusted him without needing to look.

"I will let go as soon as you say," Esca told him, "so you may steady yourself without my weight hindering you."

"Can you swim?" Marcus asked, forcing Esca to open his eyes. A small lake lay beneath them, inky black, and still so far away that every muscle in Esca's body tightened in pure terror. He forced himself to nod, no longer convinced he _could_ let go when the time came. But he would have to, he would _have to_ , if Marcus had any chance of landing without further harm.

Marcus's hands slid to his ribs—already the lack of support from his arms was enough for Esca to start slipping, and he had to fight the reflexive clutch of his hands at Marcus's neck. “Esca—” Marcus said, and Esca shut his eyes as tight as he could, and let go.

The fall felt like an eternity. He had one spare moment to drag in a breath before the lake water cut between his shoulderblades and swallowed him, pulling him down with such icy rawness that Esca couldn't think how to move his limbs. It was muscle memory that saved him, those rare summer days when it was hot enough to swim, playing with his brothers in the wide lake near their roundhouse. He swept with his hands, kicked with his feet, and made it to the surface with his lungs bursting.

“—sca! _Esca!_ ” Marcus was calling above him, heedlessly loud. Esca waved him off and nearly went under again, forgetting to breathe deep enough to help his body float. He struck out towards shore, not so very far away; his feet touched bottom just as Marcus came in to land near the edge of the lake.

When Esca was a boy the old ones used to talk of the fae folk with their ethereal beauty, their cold glittering wings and careless cruelty. For a moment Marcus hovered in the air, one leg outstretched and his wings a shimmering shroud behind him, and Esca felt a cold hand tighten around his heart even more frigid than the icy water lapping at his chin.

They shouldn't have chosen the lake. Now they would be wet and cold and did not dare light a fire.

Marcus landed with a splash and a pained grunt in the shallows, and Esca shook himself, water droplets scattering from his hair. It would be well. They could not come so far only to die now.

One of these times that assurance would be wrong.

“How bad is it?” Esca asked, struggling through the shifting gravel of the lakebed. The arrow was still protruding from Marcus's thigh, near enough his old chariot wound that Esca growled a curse in his own tongue. “...Not so very bad,” he amended when Marcus turned wide eyes on him, and Marcus coughed out a laugh.

“Would you believe it doesn't feel as bad as the surgeons knives?” Marcus asked.

Esca shook his head. Of course he would believe it. Even when he'd hated Marcus as a master and a Roman he'd found no joy in holding him down while such pain could be inflicted. “Come on,” he said, fitting himself under Marcus's arm. “We need to tend your wound and find some place to rest.”

“Esca,” Marcus said, flinching at Esca's touch. Esca stopped, surprised, and found himself staring at his own shaking hands the moment before Marcus clasped them in his own. “Esca, you're freezing.”

Marcus held Esca's hands to his own bare chest to warm them, and Esca found himself forced to meet Marcus's gaze in—in what felt like a very long time.

He looked the same. Same kind eyes, same mouth that was too soft for a soldier. Same furrow between his brows when he was concerned, same stupid, stubborn chin with his helmet scar marring the vulnerable skin underneath. Same man, only—with wings.

“Can we please get out of the lake?” Esca made himself say. Marcus shook himself all over, feathers ruffling, and nodded his agreement.

Tending Marcus's wound took only a moment; the arrow was sharp and hadn't splintered in the wound, came out clean but still left Marcus biting back a yelp. He bled again but not alarmingly so, leaving smears of blood across Esca's numb hands which he then had to wash in the lake. Esca's tunic was too wet to tear a strip to bind the wound with—another foolish error in this night full of mistakes—but Marcus still had his own tunic shoved into his belt; he cut a bandage from the hem and wrapped his leg tight, and didn't try to find a way put it back on. No tunic Esca had ever seen would fit over those enormous wings.

Esca was thinking on that—if some sort of lacing could be devised, if a cloak could be fashioned with slits to let his wings stay free—and not on how cold he was, until Marcus caught his hands again and Esca realized he couldn't feel the tips of his fingers.

“Esca,” Marcus said, his voice low and serious, “you're too cold.”

“Of course I am too cold,” Esca snapped, but he knew he was not shivering, and he knew that was a bad sign. “I fell in a lake!”

Marcus huffed at him and started pulling him even further from the water, toward the rocks and scattered shrubs that made up the hill on the lee-side. “Come here,” he said and moved Esca where he willed, handling him as he'd never done when they were back in Calleva. But Esca was still his slave, and Marcus had the right, and Esca thought again on how Marcus had promised to kill him and did not let himself believe that anything had changed.

When Marcus began stripping him, Esca did not fight. He had always expected this to happen; the fact that Marcus had never did not mean that he _would_ never. _A Roman_ , he thought, and Marcus took his braccae too, kneeling down to tug them from his feet as Esca leaned heavily against the frigid stone at his back. _A Roman on his knees._ He snorted but even that sounded weak, and when Marcus looked up at him Esca had nothing more to give, or hide behind.

Marcus stood slowly, his wings stretched out wide behind him, the soft breeze threading through his pinions catching Esca like a knife between the ribs. He shuddered hard once and went still, like a death throe.

_Will he kiss me?_ Esca wondered,  _Or will he only take me?_

Marcus was frowning so sternly that it looked like it would hurt to kiss him. Esca tipped forward anyway, and Marcus caught him, turning them as they fell so their right shoulders were to the rock, and they faced the water and the wind. Esca braced himself to touch stone; instead his skin touched feathers, hundreds of them, a cascade of warmth that made him hiss and cry out, and then Marcus's second wing folded over them both, and the breeze was shut out like a door being locked on a wide stone roundhouse.

Then Marcus took the remnants of his tunic and dragged it over Esca's hair, drying him as if he were a pup come in out of the rain. Esca didn't have the energy to splutter or fight, even when Marcus wrapped an arm around his chest and hauled him up, putting the mostly-dry tunic beneath him so he wouldn't have to sit directly on the cold hard ground.

Skin-on-skin felt like touching the sun, or lying down in the middle of a bonfire; Marcus was so hot, or perhaps Esca was far too cold. Marcus's hands dragged up and over Esca's arms, murmuring something near Esca's shoulder that only turned to words after long minutes inside his head. He talked about a soldier he knew falling overboard sailing from Rome, and when they fished him out again his lips were blue, and the Captain ordered Marcus and one other to strip and lie with him until their heat brought him back to life. He talked about how brave Esca was, letting himself fall, and how Marcus had never met anyone half as brave. He spoke haltingly of the Seal People, and how one old woman had been kind to him, and how he wished he knew how to thank her.

“ _Móran taing_ _,”_ Esca said, or tried to say—his teeth were clenched tight enough to ache, and he realized only now t hat he was shaking in every part of himself, from the top of his head down to his toes. “Y-y-y-y-you n-n-ever l-learned.”

Marcus's arms tightened as his wings did, warmth and strength and safety surrounding them until Esca felt less like he might fly apart.

“I've been a fool,” Marcus whispered.

Esca said nothing, only reached out a cold, cold fingertip and traced the edge of a feather. Marcus sharply drew in a breath.

Esca continued to shiver for a long while, at first continuously and then in waves as he warmed up, and always Marcus stroked him, pushed warmth into Esca's skin with his hands, their heat trapped together by Marcus's wings.

He realized, as he warmed, that imagining Marcus would take him in such a fashion was delirious thinking, madness brought on by the cold. Marcus never looked at men in that way. But the rest of it—

“Am I your slave again?” Esca asked. The words were hushed, sound muffled by the feathers, but Marcus still went stiff. “Are you the property of Rome's army once more?” Esca wondered, heedless of caution. “Will you bring me to Rome when you bring the Emperor back his wings?”

The wings in question ruffled as if a fierce breeze had hit them, enough to let a sliver of cold air touch Esca's skin. He hissed, and Marcus tightened his grip on Esca's arms, and slowly, slowly, the feathers settled.

“I don't know,” Marcus said after so many moments that Esca had begun to drift, exhausted. “Esca—“ He swallowed, and when he continued his voice was slower, toneless. “Rome would say you never stopped being my slave.”

Esca dropped his head onto his folded arms, feeling such weight upon his shoulders as if he wore the wings himself. “I don't remember asking what Rome would say,” he said through gritted teeth, too long walking in master-shoes to remember how to swallow his words as a slave. He could at least have remembered to say it in his own tongue so Marcus had no hope of overhearing.

As it was—and as Marcus was not deaf, or further than a hand's-width from him—Marcus heard, of course he heard, and pulled his hands away. Esca immediately resumed shivering, the loss of those two points of heat more keenly felt than the first touch of lake water, but then Marcus's hands returned, tentative, awkward strokes along his shoulders, and Esca could not think at all.

“I never wore the wings as a child,” Marcus said, so quiet _Esca_ almost couldn't hear him.

It sank in slowly. “You _never—_ ”

“They were only meant to come to me when I was grown, and in the army, and when my father's eyes failed him for scouting work. But he took me flying once, above Rome. And Esca, it is so...glorious _._ The city stretches out as far as eyes can see, no matter how high we flew. The archways of the aqueducts, the imperial palace overlooking _cirucs maximus,_ where the racing chariots look like beetles scurrying around. And everywhere we went, even as far as as Calleva, I felt the magic of Rome reaching out across the land—and how could I not? When I had seen real magic, felt it in my own hands?”

Marcus shook his head, ducked low enough that Esca felt the brush of his hair against his nape. Esca held very still.

“I was always told these wings were a gift from the Gods, made for us so we may better serve Rome. Every time people whispered about us, or made signs against evil behind our backs, my father would say it was all for Rome, that it was worth it. But when my—when the ninth legion never returned, everyone turned on him. They said he had taken us from the Gods' favor. People spat ' _Icarus_ ' at the feet of my mother wherever we walked, until I could not bear to hear the name without screaming.”

Esca closed his eyes. He had heard Stephanos speak the name in hushed tones, a story about a foolish boy who flew too close to the sun and fell to his death. This whole wild chase into the heart of Caledonia had always felt like the mad grasping of a boy—perhaps, having found the wings, Marcus had been burned.

So they were to go to Rome, then. Return the magic to the people who lay claim to it, regain his family's honor. Esca felt sea-sick from the travel already, and tired to the bone. Maybe Marcus would free him after, cut Esca loose to find his own way home to Caledonia. He found no joy in the prospect, but neither could he convince himself to run—he'd sworn an oath of honor never to abandon Marcus, and surely that meant staying by his side until Marcus had decided the debt of his life had been repaid.

More than that... Esca grit his teeth at the thought of anyone speaking ill of Marcus, or using him, or of Marcus going somewhere Esca could not follow.

“But the wings,” Marcus said, and Esca blinked, for there was the sound of Marcus's throat clenched in anguish, and that was the feel of Marcus shaking like a struck drum. “I can _feel_ them now, how ancient they are. Far older than Rome, far older than the first man who ever called himself a Roman or spoke to our Gods. And I wonder how my father could believe in the magic of Rome when he wore far greater magic on his back.”

Marcus stopped speaking but not, Esca thought, because he had run out of words. And in the next few moments Esca knew he was right, because he felt a hot splash of a teardrop against his back, before Marcus wrenched himself away.

Esca turned in the circle of Marcus's wings, kneeling in the space between Marcus's legs that had been made warm by their shared heat, careful of his injured thigh. Marcus had set his face in stone, though moisture yet glittered on his eyelashes. Even without a stitch of clothing on his body, Esca did not feel he was the one stripped bare.

He rested his hand on Marcus's shoulder, expecting him to flinch, not lean into his touch as though starved.

“Marcus,” he said quietly, and Marcus shut his eyes. “Shall I tell you what I think will happen if you return?”

Marcus said nothing. Esca drew air into himself until his chest began to ache.

“If you go to Rome,” Esca said, “the Emperor will welcome you with open arms. He will give you a great deal of money, and he will tell everyone that they will not speak another word against your name. You will have a fine house, and a wife, and maybe children. And he will use you as he used your father, and you will never see your house or your finery or your family; you will only see the blood and battle, and as soon as you fall your good name will fall also, again in the mud.”

Marcus dragged in a breath, but said nothing.

For a long moment they sat there, until the chill of Esca's still-damp hair became too much for him to repress another shiver, breaking the spell. Marcus shifted his shoulder from Esca's grasp. Esca withdrew as much as he could while Marcus reached between them, fumbling at—at his belt?

Esca had been wrong once about Marcus's intentions tonight; he sat still, not thinking anything at all. Until Marcus reached into the pouch tied to his belt and drew something out, holding it in the palm of his hand between them like a holy relic.

It was only a knife, bone handled, not intricately carved. But it was Esca's father's knife, and Esca had sworn on it, and Marcus had kept it. So perhaps it was a holy relic after all.

“I do not want you to be anything but free,” Marcus said, whispered, as he pressed the knife into Esca's grasp and clasped their hands together. “You're free. You're free, my friend.”

Esca breathed in, lungs shivering in his chest.

“I will see you safely to any place you ask,” Marcus told him, even though he had to know Esca's ears were ringing. Marcus's gaze stayed fixed to the knife. “Or if you wish me to leave you at first light, I will do this also. I would never—Esca, I would never ask you to fall with me.”

The knife tumbled from Esca's hands into the dirt.

Before he could think better on it he seized Marcus by the head, holding him still so he could not look anywhere but Esca's eyes. “You _will not fall,_ ” Esca ordered, with every drop of fear and fury in him. His own body yet screamed with the memory of falling from the sky. How high had Marcus's father been when the fatal arrow knocked him down? Marcus's lips parted; he tried to close his eyes but Esca shook him, fingers tangled in his hair. “Do you hear me, Marcus?”

Marcus worked his throat, eyes low, mouth parted—Esca had never seen him like this, so what was it that felt so achingly familiar? “I...I can't,” he started to say, and Esca's fingers tightened in Marcus's hair, wishing he could wring a promise from him.

In a flash he remembered gripping Marcus by the scalp and forcing him to his knees before the Seal Prince. Only Marcus never lowered his gaze for Liathan, even when it meant his life—he only did it when Esca held him down.

He held Marcus now, held him until his fingers ached and Marcus lost some of the awful tension in his body. His wings quivered around them, a cascade of sensation along Esca's bare skin. And slowly, so slowly it felt like watching an egg hatch, Marcus opened his eyes, and met Esca's own.

“Who do you belong to?” Esca asked, his voice quiet in the small space between them. “Does Rome own you?” The knuckles of his free hand trailed up, under Marcus's jaw, brushing against the chin-strap scar. Marcus shuddered, but his gaze didn't break.

“Or,” Esca said, and let himself feel the strength of his bloodline, the son of a Brigantes war chieftain, six long years a slave, two more in the arena. He looked at Marcus, the strength in his jaw and the softness of his mouth, the fine lines around his eyes which seemed constantly to shift from gray to green and back again.

Marcus leaned into Esca's grip; Esca loosened his hand, cupped the back of Marcus's head instead. “Or,” he said again, feeling the words come to him from deep within his bones, “are you mine?”

“Your slave?” Marcus asked, something shifting across his face. Esca suddenly knew, as if he had seen it happen a hundred times before, that if they hadn't been in danger from the cold Marcus would have flung his wings as wide as he could, puffed up like an angry pheasant.

Esca smiled. “My Marcus,” he said, and felt Marcus's feathers settle around them even before the fight drained from his frame once more.

His hands trembled at Esca's waist where they had come to rest, his fingers curled inward, knuckles brushing skin, as if he didn't dare touch Esca with the palm of his hands. “Yours?” he asked, near voiceless.

“Mine,” Esca said, and bent his head to kiss him.

It had been so long since Esca had kissed anyone, or been kissed, he feared he had forgotten how—or worse, that Marcus's strange Roman sensibilities would object to this, that he would belong to Esca in every other way but kissing, because men didn't kiss men or something equally foolish. But Marcus gasped into his mouth, surged up to meet him and kissed him fiercely back, his hands finally tightening on Esca's waist. He tasted like Marcus, only Marcus, human and his.

Esca bent their bodies closer only to hear Marcus hiss in a breath—his injury, Esca thought, and pulled back, but Marcus tightened his grasp on Esca's hips and pulled him near again, meeting the sinuous grind of his hips. He was hard in his braccae, hard enough that Esca's own cock forgot the cold and began to fill with such urgent longing it stuck him dumb.

Marcus kissed him back to life, his mouth like a firebrand over Esca's collarbone, his neck, the place under his jaw which set him shivering all over again, like he'd just stumbled out of the lake. His hand clutched uselessly at Marcus's chest for balance, only accidentally managing to graze a nipple hard enough to set Marcus's wings aflutter. Feathers danced across Esca's skin and he arched his back, blinked hazy eyes open in time to see those great wings flex behind Marcus's shoulders.

“I'm sorry,” Marcus began to say and Esca silenced him with a roll of his hips, driving their cocks together as well as he could with the barrier of Marcus's braccae.

“Marcus,” Esca said, and bent their heads together, feeling the truth of his words for longer than he could admit to himself, “there is nothing about you I find displeasing.”

A low, strangled cry wrenched from Marcus, smothered instantly against the skin of Esca's shoulder where Marcus bent his head. Esca tugged at the lacing of his braccae as Marcus's hands, large and callused, skimmed over the low dip of Esca's spine and over the round cheeks of his ass, warming him there as he had warmed Esca's arms, gasping when his cock was freed. The heat of him felt like a firebrand against Esca's skin, and Esca closed his eyes and panted, thought of fucking and being fucked. How he would cant his hips for Marcus, how Marcus might bend to him, how lovely he would look taking Esca's cock, how much Esca longed to feel Marcus inside him, spreading his warmth. A hundred thousand different ways and he wanted them all, needed them, needed Marcus—

Something soft shifted against Esca's hand and he wrenched his eyes open, feeling drugged from the aching rocking of their cocks together. At some point he must have grabbed onto Marcus's wing, high up where it met his back—white downy feathers threaded between his fingers, which clenched at every roll of Marcus's hips. Esca's breath hitched.

“Am I hurting you?” Esca murmured, words slurred with the pleasure building between them. He twitched his hand, ruffling feathers against the grain. Marcus moaned.

Esca began to draw his hand away. “Marcus?”

He hissed when Marcus nipped at his collarbone, tightened his fingers reflexively further down the wing where the feathers were thicker. Marcus's whole spine bowed, head tossed back in a silent, desperate cry.

Esca watched his throat work, the whole expanse of it, all the Roman training at work to keep this boy from saying _please._ “Do you want me to,” Esca asked, hiding his smirk against the scar on Marcus's chin.

Marcus swallowed and said nothing, but his cock betrayed him, jerking against his belly, his and Esca's both.

“I was just thinking about fucking you,” Esca rumbled, only half true, as he trailed his lips along the cut of Marcus's jaw. Marcus's mouth fell open, wet and gasping, his eyes screwed tightly shut. His hips had stilled, near painfully; Esca caught both their cocks in his free hand, only held them together, feeling the hot throb of their heartbeats in counterpoint. “Would you like that?”

Marcus's grip on his hips was near bruising. But he nodded, the merest jerk of his head. If they hadn't been touching Esca might not have felt it. For his honesty Esca gave him—them—a stroke, root to tip, as slowly as he dared. When his thumb circled the head Marcus gulped back a sharp keening whine.

“I could take you from behind,” Esca offered, another slow, slow stroke, while his other hand toyed with the tip of a feather, bending the fine strands back and forth. “On your knees,” Esca growled against Marcus's jaw, the same words he'd snarled in front of Liathan. Marcus began to shake. “With my hands buried in your wings and my cock splitting you open—”

Marcus came with a violent jerk that would have unseated Esca if Marcus hadn't been clutching him so tight, came in fat white spurts that drenched Esca's hand and left him gasping, punched out little moans that Esca wanted to devour straight from his mouth. All thought left at once, all capacity for speech—Marcus was beautiful, _beautiful,_ his wings wrenched wide around them and Esca couldn't feel the cold.

They fell—Esca forward, Marcus back—and in another time Esca would wonder at the snarl in his mouth but he needed, he _needed._ His hips rutted gracelessly, his hand too clumsy and slick _with Marcus's release_ to—

Marcus's hand found the back of his neck, heavy and grounding and warm. He smiled, his eyes hazy and calm, happy for the first time Esca had ever seen.

“I would,” Marcus said, even though it cost him a deep flush from neck to belly button. “I would like that,” he said, and Esca came.

Faintly he knew he had striped Marcus's chest with his own fluids, faintly he remembered the agonizing relief and the way Marcus used his hand to pull Esca down into a kiss. Mostly he remembered the warmth of Marcus's body beneath his, and the chill of the air at once swept away by the settling of twin great feathered wings around them.

“Yours,” Esca murmured against Marcus's skin. It felt so good to say it, startlingly good, to be able to choose who he belonged to with his entire heart. “I'm yours.”

Marcus gathered him even closer in his arms, as if this, of all the impossible, magical things that had happened in the last day, was the one that might shake his belief. And yet when he answered, “Mine,” and brought his mouth to Esca's his touch was sure, and steady.

“I will fight all of Rome if she tries to take you from me,” Esca swore even though his lids were heavy with the need to sleep. This time he needed no knife to bind this promise between them.

Marcus laughed a little when his declaration was followed by a yawn. But Esca still sensed tension in him, a worry that threatened to pull them from the first sense of comfort Esca had felt in an age. “Or,” he grudgingly added, “I suppose if the odds are too great—”

He had to pause for another cursed yawn, and for the kiss Marcus pressed to his temple which temporarily scattered his thoughts. “If the odds are too great I will fly us to safety,” Marcus finished the oath, his thumb tracing the patterns of Esca's tattoo.

“And I will point out where the sun is,” Esca mumbled, his cheek again on Marcus's chest, “so we will never fly too high.”

Marcus's wings curled even tighter around their bodies as they settled down to sleep, as heavy and warm as furs in a roundhouse. For a moment Esca couldn't tell if he had sprouted wings from his own back, if their feathers were mingling together, white and brown and golden. Then Marcus pressed a kiss to his still damp hair, and Esca felt himself again, his whole body pressed to Marcus's, human but miraculous.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! If you feel inspired to rec this fic on tumblr [here's an easy post to reblog!](http://queenklu.tumblr.com/post/135275888202/new-fic-from-me-weird-title-nan-sgiathan-oir)


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